Hosting a Corporate Meeting? Here’s how to get Organized

Whether you’re hosting a meeting to confer with new clients or internal members of your company, it’s important to make sure you’re organised. Plus, with the UK falling into a recession, it’s important to keep employees and associates motivated through hard times.

In our step-by-step guide below, we’ve outlined the best approach to planning a memorable, entertaining, and purposeful business meeting.

1. Do your Research

Before investing in a big event or meeting for your business, it’s crucial to do some research. Some of the most important questions to ask yourself might include:

• Which topic will you be presenting on?
• What will be the agenda of the meeting, and who will write it?
• What is the desired outcome of the meeting?
• Would you like your guests to learn, educate, or both?
• Is it worth posting about your meeting on LinkedIn?

2. Invite Attendees

Think about who you’d like to attend your big meeting before sending out invitations. It’s up to you whether you’d like to send physical invites or not, but most prospective guests would appreciate it.

You should also make sure that at least some of your audience will be able to participate or will learn something from the meeting. It could be worth looking into booking a special celebrity guest speaker if your budget allows it.

If special guests are absent on the day, the meeting could be unproductive. Make sure all required guests can attend, send out pre-meeting notes to attendees, and request RSVPs, too.

3. Do a Test Run for your Tech

There’s nothing worse than having technical problems during a meeting, so it’s important to make sure you’ve tested the technology you’ll be using in the meeting.

First things first, ensure you have the correct USBs to connect your device to the presentation screen and to keep all of the information you need to hand. Keeping your presentation and notes on a physical USB could prove invaluable if you encounter an unexpected issue with the Cloud on the day.

4. Stick to the Agenda

During the meeting, you should ensure the meeting stays on track and follows the agenda.

If you’re planning on allowing guests to ask questions and participate, it’s a good idea to get a scribe to attend to take notes. Alternatively, you could record the meeting with a microphone, screen capture and camera so that you and your team can refer back to it at a later date.

5. Make it thought-Provoking

Set actionable tasks during the meeting. These might be objectives for clients or employees to take away from the meeting into their future work, or you could ask guests to prepare their own response to a small activity.

Decide beforehand on actionable tasks that you’d like to set during the meeting. It’s always worth leaving a positive impression on your guests, allowing them to leave with something to think about.